Australian founder of WikiLeaks, Yashanje, faces a court ruling today in the United Kingdom on espionage charges for publishing hundreds of thousands of classified documents on the Internet, and the court will decide whether he should be extradited to the United States.
AFP reports that District Judge Vanessa Baraitser of Old Bailey, Central London’s criminal court, is scheduled to rule on the sensational media freedom case starting at 10:00 GMT.
Julian Assange, 49, faces 18 charges in the United States related to the release of 500,000 classified documents by WikiLeaks in 2010 detailing U.S. military operations in Afghanistan and Iraq, among other dimensions.
Today’s court ruling will be subject to appeal, meaning that legal proceedings could continue before any possible extradition from the United Kingdom. If convicted in the U.S., Yasanje could spend up to 175 years in prison.
The British court’s decision comes as Germany and a United Nations (UN) human rights expert have expressed concern about the human rights and humanitarian implications of Yassanje’s extradition.
Yassanje suffers from a respiratory disease that makes him more susceptible to Coronavirus 2019 disease (COVID-19). Several prisoners have been infected in the high-security prison in Southeast London where he is being held.
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